My Life Re-Shuffle

This is it! My 1st Anniversary gift from Sunsun. An iPod Shuffle! To many who've known my habit of carrying big bro iPod 4G, this addition would have been thought redundant. "Why an iPod Shuffle when you already got a 20GB one?" If anyone were to know me well enough, he or she would have noticed that I live on music and I'd always have it around anywhere I go. I can roam around cities alone with just music in my ears. I used to roam Manhattan with just my Sony minidisc walkman. Sunsun's choice of this gadget is like a portable oxygen tank to me. She knows the Allen who talks little but breathe music into his own ears. In fact, my iPod fever came at the same time we decided to be together. I got my first iPod 3G in Japan, which is also the same time I 'proposed' to her. I lost that iPod on our Bangkok wedding day, believed to have dropped out of my bag when we were rushing to our hotel suite to prepare for the wedding ceremony. A month later, when passing by a duty free electronic shop at Changi Airport, my newly wedded wife suggested to me that perhaps we could get me a new iPod. She knew that part of me who just couldn't breathe properly without the mobility of an iPod. Now, a year later, this little addition to the family signifies not just our 1st anniversary, but also the first 'bought'-day of my 4G iPod, conveniently known as SeraPod.

Similarly simple in form, the iPod Shuffle seems to sound better than its big brother. Also, it is incredibly light weight. Sizing just slightly larger than a pack of Wrigley gum, this little 0.8 ounce stick differs from its precedents by Sony, Creative and other earlier makers of flash memory MP3 players not just by the simplicity form, but the weight factor is contributed by stripping it of a fancy LCD display and the array of control buttons. With this light weight, one can actually do somersault with an iPod Shuffle. You can never do this with the 4G iPod without feeling the weight of the gadget and consequential hearing of the "THUD!" sound when it hits the ground (not that I plan to breakdance with a Shuffle either... That'd look so odd when watching someone breakdance without music). Also unlike it's big brothers, the hard disk based iPods, it is stripped of the jukebox ability of carrying your entire CD collection with you down to the bare simplicity of just 100 plus songs you need for the day.

Last but not least, I love the variety of accessories and add-ons to customize the look of your own unique iPod Shuffle. Like Threadless.com, the iPod Shuffle also has its open design website selling unique protective sticker site at ShuffleSome.com. I think I'm going to contribute a design or two to the website.